New effort to increase visas for tech workers as high as 300,000

The tech industry, one of the most powerful players in the immigration debate, threw down its marker Tuesday with a bipartisan stand-alone bill to increase H-1B visas for skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000 with an escalator that could bring total visas to 300,000 a year.

Silicon Valley has been chafing under H-1B caps since the last comprehensive bill collapsed in 2006. Industry leaders have long argued that a green card should be stapled to every diploma earned by a foreign student in math or engineering, on the grounds that the U.S. is losing talented people educated in its own universities. Despite support from California House Democrats Anna Eshoo (Palo Alto) and Zoe Lofgren (San Jose), the effort has been stymied by stiff resistance from some U.S. tech workers and bipartisan opponents in Congress who say the industry just wants cheap labor.

The bill would also “allow dual intent for foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities to provide the certainty they need to ensure their future in the United States.” And it would exempt from the employment-based green card cap dependents of employment-based visa holders, U.S. STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) advanced degree holders, “persons with extraordinary ability” and “outstanding professors and researchers.”

The authors say the bill is critical to U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. In addition to increasing H-1B visas to 115,000 a year, the bill would create an automatic escalator “so that the cap can adjust – up or down – to the demands of the economy” with a total ceiling of 300,000.

Depending on how quickly the annual cap is reached, mini-escalators are included that would provide as many as 20,000 additional visas immediately. Additional sponsors include Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Mark Warner (D-Va,).

Whether 2013 will be a replay of the immigration failure of 2006, we shall know by summer. The various factions are suiting up for well-worn roles. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will be pushing for expanded temporary slots for the farm workers who are essential to California’s produce industry. The bigger bipartisan Senate framework introduced Monday by the Gang of Eight has placeholders for both tech and farm workers. Florida Republican Marco Rubio is one of the Gang and also a sponsor of the separate tech worker bill, giving it added juice.

Pew just released a new estimate on the total U.S. immigrant population, tallying a record 40.4 million in 2011, or 13 percent of the population, based on an analysis of Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

UPDATE: Obama gave a plug to the tech side in Las Vegas Tuesday: “Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities. They’re earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science. But once they finish school, once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave our country. Think about that.

“We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs in China or India or Mexico or someplace else. That’s not how you grow new industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors. ”